northerly Spring 2018

northerly Byron Writers Festival Member Magazine | Spring 2018

ANITA HEISS SELINA TUSITALA MARSH ANTHONY LAWRENCE JARRAH DUNDLER

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Contents Spring 2018 Features 003 Meet Adam van Kempen Q&A with Byron Writers Festival’s new Chair 010 Susie Warrick Young Writers Award Read the winning story for 2018 by Ella Hill-Smith 014 Story Circle Project Unique local initiative aims to raise suicide awareness 019 Flash fiction winners Read the winning stories from Byron Writers Festival’s inaugural Flash Your Fiction competition

Regulars 002 Chair’s note 003 News and events Kerry O’Brien launches his memoir, Insiders returns to Byron and more 006 StoryBoard Update Travelling writing workshop drops in on the Festival 006 The Books That Shaped Me Kyogle author Jarrah Dundler on the books that inspired his writing 008 Feature Poet Two poems from Anthony Lawrence 012 Notes from the Festival I Anita Heiss interviewed by Katinka Smit 016 Notes from the Festival II Selina Tusitala Marsh interviewed by Katinka Smit 018 Southern Cross University Showcase Short fiction from Sarvah Z. Rayner 020 Book Review Kathleen Steele on Dyschronia by Jennifer Mills 022 What YA Reading?

YA fiction reviews with Polly Jude 023 Book Review Peter Mitchell on The Passage of Love by Alex Miller

northerly

northerly is the quarterly magazine of Byron Writers Festival.

Byron Writers Festival is a non-profit member organisation presenting workshops and events year-round, including the annual Festival.

LOCATION/CONTACT Level 1, 28 Jonson Street, Byron Bay P: 02 6685 5115 F: 02 6685 5166 E: info@byronwritersfestival.com W: byronwritersfestival.com POSTAL ADDRESS PO Box 1846, Byron Bay NSW 2481 EDITOR: Barnaby Smith, northerlyeditor@gmail.com CONTRIBUTORS: Maz Bragge, Ashleigh Cassell, SJ Finn, Carla Fitzgerald, Emma Hughes, Amanda James, Polly Jude, Anthony Lawrence, Ella Hill-Smith, Gabby Le Brun, Ingrid Mason, Peter Mitchell, Kurt Petersen, Sarvah Z. Rayner, Katinka Smit, Kathleen Steele BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL BOARD CHAIRPERSON Adam van Kempen SECRETARY Russell Eldridge TREASURER Cheryl Bourne MEMBERS Jesse Blackadder, Kate Cameron, Marele Day, Lynda Dean, Hilarie Dunn, Lynda Hawryluk, Anneli Knight.

LIFE MEMBERS Jean Bedford, Jeni Caffin, Gayle Cue, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Chris Hanley, John Hertzberg, Fay Knight, Irene O’Brien, Jennifer Regan, Cherrie Sheldrick, Brenda Shero, Heather Wearne MAIL OUT DATES Magazines are sent in MARCH, JUNE, SEPTEMBER and DECEMBER PRINTER Quality Plus Printers Ballina ADVERTISING We welcome advertising by members and relevant organisations. A range of ad sizes are available. The ad booking deadline for each issue is the first week of the month prior.

Email northerlyeditor@gmail.com DISCLAIMER The Byron Writers Festival presents northerly in good faith and accepts no responsibility for any misinformation or problems arising from any misinformation. The views expressed by contributors and advertisers are not necessarily the views of the management committee or staff. We reserve the right to edit articles with regard to length. Copyright of the contributed articles is maintained by the named author and northerly.

CONNECT WITH US Visit byronwritersfestival.com. Sign up for a membership. Stay updated and join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.

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024 Festival workshops 025 Competitions 028 Writers groups

We acknowledge the Arakwal Bumberbin People of the Byron Shire as the traditional custodians of this land.

northerly SPRING 2018 | 01

Chair’s note By the time you begin to enjoy this new edition of northerly, I will be settling into my new role at Bond University. At the conclusion of this year’s Festival, I stepped down as Chair after an eight-year association with the organisation. I first came on board with the Festival in the communications/publicity role in 2011 and again in 2014 and then served on the Board for nearly four years, two of which were as Chair.

When I first arrived in Byron about twelve years ago, one of the first events I attended was the Festival. I was captivated from the first. I was drawn into the Festival story and fell in love with the organisation and what we do.

Our little dot of a town hosts some of Australia’s, and the world’s, most esteemed authors and writers. Discussing, debating, agreeing, disagreeing, exploring, challenging. That’s what I love about the Festival and we know from the extensive feedback we receive from our patrons and our authors and our publishers and our partners, they love it too.

2018 was, I think, our best year yet. This sentiment was echoed during the Festival and in the avalanche of positive feedback we have received since closing the gates. We hosted 12,000 people across 117 Festival sessions, workshops, feature events, school events and our regional Festival road trip.

2018 Festival guest Kon Karapanagiotidis, author of The Power of Hope and founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre had this to say: ‘It’s my first time at the Festival and what’s not to love? The beauty of the atmosphere, the energy, the diversity of stories, the passion of the writers, I am on a high. It’s filled my heart, my spirit and my imagination being here.’

It has been a great privilege and an honour to help lead this organisation. The Festival team is dedicated, passionate and works so hard to bring us the Festival and all the other brilliant events and activities throughout the year. My heartfelt thanks to them, to all our volunteers, our partners and to our Board who have been so generous with their help and advice. Thanks too to our members, you are the core of our organisation’s story.

I am handing the Byron Writers Festival playbook to local lawyer and Board member Adam van Kempen who I know will take this organisation to new frontiers with passion, determination and care. Adam has already served on the Festival Board for seven years so knows us very well. He is an avid reader and lover of literature and great supporter of the local not-for-profit sector.

I believe we do something very special, very important and very wonderful at Byron Writers Festival. Thanks for trusting me with our special community organisation these past few years. I’m now off to start a new story.

Jennifer St George Outgoing Chair, Byron Writers Festival

02 | SPRING 2018 northerly

NEWS & EVENTS

Introducing Adam van Kempen After two successful years at the helm, Jennifer St George has stepped down as Chair of Byron Writers Festival, paving the way for Adam van Kempen to assume this vital role. He chats with northerly about his history with the Festival, his reading habits and how the Festival will evolve in the coming years.

Can you give us a potted history of your involvement with the Festival?

Chris Hanley, the then Chair, came to see me in late 2011 or early 2012.

We ended up talking about books, politics, history and a number of other things. He asked if I would join the Board – I think that John Hertzberg, the former Treasurer of the Festival, put Chris up to it. Since that time I have been privileged to be involved as the organisation has rebranded and modernised through its updated constitution and reviews of our mission and purpose, not to mention seven fantastic Festivals.

What do you anticipate being your main duties as Chair?

My hope is to provide stewardship to the organisation as we continue on the path of modernisation, and along with the rest of the Board provide support and guidance for our wonderful Director Edwina Johnson and her staff. Our role is to enable them to continue to deliver an outstanding Festival and a year-round program of workshops and events, such as StoryBoard, our children’s literacy and creative writing program founded by the indefatigable Jesse Blackadder.

What are some of the works of literature that have made a big impact on you over the years?

I remember pinching The Thorn Birds from beside my mother’s bed when I was eleven or twelve.

I think it was the first adult novel

I read. Like many young adults, George Orwell had a big impact on me and I became a fan of Stephen King – not so much for the horror genre but because I liked the way he wrote. I remember reading King’s collection of novellas Different Seasons when I was fourteen or fifteen. Those stories have stayed with me for a long time, including Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption and The Body, both of which were made into major movies. I also read a lot of Dick Francis novels as a teenager. As I got older I became interested in environment and nature writing – I still love A Million Wild Acres by Eric Rolls and Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe.

The latter should be required reading for every secondary school student in Australia, to dispel the pervading myths around our First Nations people at the time of white colonisation. I also love William McInnes’s humour, Mark Tredinnick’s beautifully descriptive prose, a good dab of Jesse Blackadder, and Don Watson’s works including Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language.

How do you see Byron Writers Festival evolving in the coming years?

We will build on our successes and continue to get better at what we do – not only delivering the Festival each year but growing and consolidating the StoryBoard program, of which we’re very proud, and our year-round events.

The Residential Mentorship program, run by our famous author and Board member, Marele Day, is also a measure of the success of the organisation and I can see that evolving over the years to come. We’re already discussing a writer-in-residence program, which may work in concert with this. We will continue to be the preeminent regional writers festival and connect readers, writers and thinkers from all over the country and around the world. While I leave the curatorial decisions to our Director, I look forward to seeing a showcase of stories in all of their expressions. I do not believe that bigger is necessarily better and I think that the annual Festival in particular is the perfect size now with 12,000 patrons attending events over Festival week.

Adam van Kempen is the principal of BvK Solicitors & Attorneys and joined the Festival Board in 2012. A Far North Coast ‘local’, Adam grew up in the region, and returned some 15 years ago, having decided that cities are a great place to visit. He is proud to be involved with Byron Writers Festival as well as other community organisations such as SPRUNG!!

Integrated Dance Theatre and Screenworks Northern Rivers.

northerly SPRING 2018 | 03

NEWS & EVENTS

Margin Notes News, events and announcements from Byron Writers Festival Best of Insiders returns to Byron ABC TV’s Sunday morning discussion program, Insiders, is once again coming to Byron Bay. Host Barrie Cassidy will guide the panel through all the big 2018 political developments (and there’s been a few), and screen the most entertaining videos of the political year. The event takes place on Tuesday 27 November at Byron Theatre. For details keep an eye on byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on

Opportunities coming soon

The Anzac Project winners. From left: Mondo Hays, Miriam Ellemor-Collins, Isabella Stephens, Amelie Pollock and Scout Robinson-Gale, Lachlan Kelly, and Dominic Kingsford. (Photo: Kurt Petersen)

Byron Writers Festival Anzac Project Byron Writers Festival’s Anzac Project invited young people aged 14 to 22 to submit creative works across a variety of mediums according to the title ‘Northern Rivers’ Memory of War: Stories of Then, Told By People of Now’. The six winners showcased their work at a special event on the Sunday of Byron Writers Festival 2018 hosted by author and historian Anna Clark. For more information and to view the winners’ artworks, go to byronwritersfestival.com/anzac

Kerry O’Brien Memoir launch Friend of Byron Writers Festival and broadcasting veteran Kerry O’Brien will launch his memoir, Kerry O’Brien, A Memoir, on Sunday 11 November at Byron Theatre. Published by Allen & Unwin, the book sees O’Brien reflecting on the social and political 04 | SPRING 2018 northerly

upheaval he has witnessed and the personalities who have made history. In his time in the media he has come face to face with Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, Barack Obama, David Bowie, Muhammad Ali and countless others. More details of the launch event will be published at byronwritersfestival. com/whats-on

This October and November will see several new development opportunities for Byron Writers Festival members, including: the chance to access our Block Mentorship and Firsthand Feedback services for free through our new Mentoring Scholarships program (October); and an opportunity to get face-to-face with literary agent, Alex Adsett, and literary editor, Shel Sweeney when they offer a day of consultations and seminars in Byron Bay on 17 November. More information will be sent via email in the coming weeks.

Cover story

The cover art for this issue of northerly is Australian Gothic by Doon Doon-based artist Helena Duckworth. Australian Gothic is the fifth piece in a series of works

by Duckworth that parody wellknown paintings. Helena’s work has hung in the Border Art Prize at Tweed Regional Gallery and at Images of Uki. Thank you to Peter Schardin for photography.

NEWS & EVENTS

Hearts go out to McGregor All at northerly and Byron Writers Festival would like is offer their support and warm wishes to the family of esteemed local novelist, journalist and social commentator Craig McGregor, who sadly suffered a stroke recently. A firm friend of northerly in recent times, McGregor was profiled by the magazine in 2016. His most recent book is Motel.

Get well soon.

Northerly seeks contributors The official magazine of Byron Writers Festival, northerly, is seeking new blood for its writing team.

Those interested in reviewing books are particularly encouraged to get in touch, while any budding literary critics interested in writing essays or conducting author interviews are also very welcome. Email the editor at northerlyeditor@gmail.com

A taste of Jaipur in Adelaide The already strong links between the literary communities of Australia and India will be further consolidated this spring following the announcement that Adelaide’s OzAsia Festival has partnered with Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) to host JLF Adelaide, which will run 9-11 November.

The event will host more than fifty writers over the weekend, including travel writer William Dalrymple and Shobhaa De. JLF had previously partnered with Melbourne Writers Festival in 2017. The full festival lineup will be announced in September.

‘The completely free JLF program will give audiences the opportunity to surround themselves with some of the best literary minds from around the world,’ said Adelaide Festival Centre CEO Douglas Gauiter.

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Working class writers festival for UK In an intriguing new development in the evolution of the literary festival, a new ‘working class writers festival’ is on the cards for the UK in 2020.

The idea stems from author Natasha Carthew, who tweeted in July, ‘Comrades! This is a call to arms—we’ve got to get ourselves a #WorkingClassWriters Lit Fest! I’ve been doing the circuit and we’re a bit underrepresented int (sic) we?’

That led to offers of support from author Kit de Waal, publishers Emily Drabble, Nina Pottell and Samantha Missingham and a host of other industry figures.

Carthew said that the motivation for the festival comes from a lack of representation of working class voices on the UK festival scene.

‘I feel we are an equally talented group of people that do not get enough exposure, young people from similar backgrounds especially need to have something to aspire to, something that is reflective of their society and writers they can relate to and look up to.’

Planned for 2020, Carthew and organisers are currently working towards a festival that will also offer workshops.

Writing Hour at Byron Bay Library Any writers in need of a quiet and tranquil place to get their heads down and work are warmly invited to the weekly Writing Hour at Byron Bay Library.

Every Tuesday, literary sorts gather in the Local Studies room at 10am for two hours of uninterrupted writing time, often followed by a chat and a coffee. Wifi is available.

Congratulations to Writing Hour organiser Barbara Barrett, whose story ‘Strike A Pose’ was published in the NSW Seniors Story Book for 2017, a book that is distributed in libraries across the state, and was launched at Government House with attendance by Tanya Davies MP, Minister for Ageing, Women and Mental Health. Proof, if ever it was needed, that Writing Hour works.

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NEWS & EVENTS

Extravaganza of stories The winter months have seen StoryBoard, Byron Writers Festival’s travelling creative writing workshop for schools, engage and inspire young readers and writers across the region, culminating in a day of entertainment and creativity at Kids Big Day Out on the Sunday of Byron Writers Festival 2018. Here, Gabby Le Brun (StoryBoard Project Manager) and Maz Bragge (StorySpace Venue Supervisor) provide an update on this key Festival program.

Primary Schools Day Everybody raise your right hand.

‘I do hereby solemnly swear to remain passionately curious, have faith in my own ideas, know that there is no right and wrong and to keep reading and writing forever and ever.’

Mistress of Ceremonies at Lismore Schools Day, Katie Cooper Wares, led the oath to 600 enthusiastic school children and teachers, setting the tone for a magnificent morning of story immersion, imagination, daydreaming, and celebration.

Over four days, Oliver Phommavanh, Lian Tanner, Matt Stanton, Andrew Hansen and Jessica Roberts presented to 2000 primary school students, 100 teachers, and 20 enthusiastic Festival volunteers.

Lian Tanner, author of The Rogues, made up stories on the spot with the kids.

‘I give them the character of Lord Rump as a starting point, and they charge ahead from there,’ she said.

‘On Tuesday he was cheating at cards, and was attacked by a man with a playing card that shot lasers.

Yesterday he robbed a bank with dynamite, which brought the FBI. And lots of visits to the toilet for some reason.’

The queues for book signing got longer and longer as excited kids waited patiently for their favourite authors to sign their books.

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Students from Woodenbong Central School, who had travelled for more than two hours to reach Lismore, enjoyed a creative writing workshop with Oliver Phommavanh. Their exercises included writing a fourteen-word biography and creating unusual characters that challenged stereotypes.

Secondary Schools Day On Secondary Schools Day, over 600 students descended on the Byron Writers Festival site.

Highlights included Hyeonseo Lee’s account of her defection from North Korea and Tristan Bancks and Ben Hobson discussing the craft of writing.

MC duties were shared between eight students from Alstonville High School, all of whom impressed with their maturity and preparation.

StorySpace at Kids Big Day Out A highlight of the Kids Big Day Out main stage program on Festival Sunday was the interactive space for story-making, StorySpace.

With the beautifully decorated StoryBoard bus on the festival site and a stunning Byron day, our little pop-up village with teepees, colourful mats, beanbags, notebooks and pencils was the perfect setting for the Kids Big Day Out workshops. With kids clamouring to be part of the experience, it was an especially frenzied and charming environment

in which they could make their own books with children’s author Zanni Louise. Amid glue-sticks, scissors, and books sewn together with string, we saw tales of ponies, unicorns, fairies, bullies and superheroes emerge.

Author Tristan Bancks, armed with his sleuthing strategies for storymaking, had a group of wide-eyed children bursting with ideas and generating stories inspired by the images on the StoryBoard bus. The group then set off on a walking tour to ‘spy’ on Festivalgoers and think about developing shifty characters and ‘disaster’ scenarios. The little Sherlocks returned with some hilarious ideas, including the possibility of writers taking over the Festival in a siegelike way. In the third workshop of the day, the illustrator-author team of Misa Alexander and Erin Knutt demonstrated the process of illustrating stories and making characters in 3D, using small squares of wood and pipe cleaners.

The kids were in craft heaven while making their precious little blockheads. The day ended with quieter sessions offering iPads and earphones to listen to the ABC Fierce Girls podcasts created by YA author Samantha Turnbull. A gorgeous ending to a magnificent day.

For more information go to byronwritersfestival.com/storyboard

FEATURE

The Books That Shaped Me: Jarrah Dundler The book that introduced me to the flow

The book that introduced me to a new friend

The Adventures of The MuddleHeaded Wombat

by Ruth Park

The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger

I joined my first writing group when I was eight years old. Every lunch me and my classmates, Emma and Grant, would meet on a bench in the playground, pull out our exercise books and share our writing. From memory their works were original – Emma’s had a feisty female lead, and Grant’s a talkingturtle protagonist. Mine, however, were rip-offs of Ruth Park’s The Muddle-Headed Wombat. Well, not entire rip-offs – I’d ‘borrow’ Ruth’s characters and create my own stories for them. I can’t remember much about the actual stories, but I do recall the buzz I got when I wrote them. Especially on the day of ‘the challenge.’ Grant put it to the group: who could write the longest story during lunch? Challenge accepted, we took our places and wrote. Tearing across the pages, my HB pencil took me away from the playground and off on an epic adventure with Wombat, Tabby and Mouse. At the ding bell I had twenty pages. Emma had twentysomething, and Grant thirty. Emma cried foul at Grant’s larger-thanusual handwriting (the day of ‘the challenge’ also ended up being our last meeting) but while I was usually a sore loser, on this occasion I wasn’t. I was feeling too good.

Buzzing from being lost in the flow.

I was seventeen when I met Holden Caulfield. From the first few lines of The Catcher in the Rye, I felt like I knew the guy. He spoke to my own jaded, somewhat lost, teenage self. He made me laugh, and by the end of the book, cry. I became obsessed with the novel. Not the ‘carry-in-your-pocket’ or ‘buy-everycopy-you-see’ kind of obsession that Catcher attracted, but I loved hanging out with Holden so much that I read it ten or so times over the course of a year. Since my teens, however, I haven’t revisited it. While sometimes I’ve thought about it, I’ve resisted, thinking that maybe Catcher was one of those things (like Vanilla Ice or rollerblades) best left in the past. I was worried that if I read it as an adult I might not enjoy it, and my memory of it would be tainted. I was worried that I might not like Holden. That I might see him as some kind of phoney jerk. In writing this article though, I decided to revisit the book. Just a dip. A few lines from the first page and a few from the last. And it felt great – like catching up with an old friend.

The book that lifts me Cannery Row by John Steinbeck If I’m at the writing desk feeling uninspired, sometimes I’ll pluck my tattered copy of Cannery Row from my bookshelf and read the prologue. These two pages – a beautiful evocation of place, a pithy introduction to the novel’s ragtag assortment of characters, and a narrator’s wondrous reflection on writing – never fail to move me. While it’s been years since I read beyond those opening pages, the prologue reminds me of what I love about Cannery Row. Steinbeck is writing about a place he knows intimately and in which he reportedly spent some of the happiest years of his life. And this shows in his writing. Despite ‘the iron, the rust, the splintered wood, chipped pavement, weedy lots and junk heaps’ there is beauty in Cannery Row. Through the intertwined stories of Doc, Lee Chong, Dora, and Mack and the boys (a group of vagabonds) Steinbeck presents a microcosm of humanity. He shows us that the ‘whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches’ when viewed through another lens are indeed ‘saints and angels and martyrs and holy men’.

Jarrah was raised on Bundjalung country in Northern NSW. Since completing his arts degree at Griffith University he’s worked as a grant writer, pizza chef, university tutor, barista, and stonemason’s labourer. His debut novel Hey Brother, about the challenges faced by a teenage boy when his brother returns from war, was selected for a Byron Writers Festival Residential Mentorship, a Varuna fellowship and was shortlisted for the Australian/Vogel Literary Award. Jarrah currently lives back in the Northern Rivers region – the setting for his fiction – where he works as a mental health peer worker. northerly SPRING 2018 | 07

POETRY

Feature Poet: Anthony Lawrence Alarm A synonym for alarm is the sound of a cabinet being opened the contents of a bottle shaken into a palm, water running and then my father’s face in light that never failed to offer the room and its flock wallpaper a ruinous afterglow.

And when the drug took effect his voice broke like news of a crisis as he came towards me his features out of synch with his breathing which as I came to learn, meant his heart was having to work overtime for little reward.

Are you alright? I’d ask already knowing the answer.

Sometimes he’d stand, swaying or he’d sigh and lower himself to the floor as if into a nest of spiders.

His eyes. His hands. The inarticulate nature of his demands.

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POETRY

Alienology A recent sighting demands that I record the following: Aliens have established a colony below the Great Southern Ocean.

When the outboard slowed to a drawl ten nautical miles off Pirate’s Bay, a school of sardines dispersed and instead of gannets, seals, dolphin, tuna, sharks and marlin cutting through a mirror ball of scales, a tapering head appeared in the rolling slick, and bubble trailed back and forth, its long red hair like skeins of silk withdrawn from a bloody sleeve at the end of a magic trick. I tied myself to the boat with rope, slipped on a mask and fins, went over and this is what I saw: the release of light from a star that had survived entry into the atmosphere; the pulse in a vein of lavender stone that made a sound like weeping in a stairwell.

I surfaced, more alarmed at my acceptance at having found a new form of life than the discovery itself.

On the boat I fired a signal flare and opened a bottle of Eldorado rum.

I toasted the known and unknown amazements of this world then went below to ensure my red-haired alien was secure as I waited like an explorer for the authorities to come.

Anthony Lawrence’s most recent books are 101 Poems (Pitt Street Poetry, 2018) and Headwaters (Pitt Street Poetry, 2016), winner of the 2017 Prime Minister’s Literature Award for Poetry. His books and individual poems have won many awards, including the Philip Hodgins Memorial Medal, the Blake Poetry Prize, the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, and the NSW Premiers Award. A book of prose poems, Explaining Villanelles to an Alien is forthcoming in 2018. He is a senior lecturer at Griffith University.

He lives on Moreton Bay with his partner, the artist Julie Manning.

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Susie Warrick Young Writers Award Byron Writers Festival’s annual Susie Warrick Young Writers Award invited Northern Rivers writers aged between thirteen and twenty-one to enter their short stories in a competition that offers $1000 in prize money to the winner. Congratulations to Ella Hill-Smith, the winner of this year’s competition, with her story ‘The Girl Who Collected Broken Seashells’. Ella received her award at Byron Writers Festival 2018.

Congratulations also to the runners-up Mackenzie-Jane Stephan and Mikaela Auld, whose stories will be published in the next issue of northerly.

The Girl Who Collected Broken Seashells Ella Hill-Smith

She left town many years before I arrived, late in the summer of 1998, but her legacy was still the talk of the town. I first heard about the Seashell Girl from the children at the school, after I moved to the Island - I was a teacher back then.

She had fascinated them, and even the youngest could still remember her story. Some of the kids tell me she was a mermaid, while the old lady who ran the village shop was adamant she was a selkie, a seal-girl from the ocean, looking for her long-lost love on the land, the person who had stolen her seal-skin. Despite my misgivings, I found her story intriguing, and as I grew to know our little island and its inhabitants, the more I believed the stories they would tell.

No one can pinpoint exactly when she arrived in Shelley Cove, but everyone tells me one day she wasn’t there, and the next she 10 | SPRING 2018 northerly

was, roaming the beaches early one morning. Before technology reached the Island, before the bridge and TV, the only way people found the place was when they washed ashore. The people on the island were born here, lived here and died here. Now it’s a remarkably different place, the tourists arriving in their droves to take photos of the pristine beaches and fishing villages, leaving behind their rubbish and their vacant holiday houses.

Of all the curious things about this girl, the strangest of all was her shells. Every morning, at daybreak, when the ocean lapped at the shore, and the sunlight sprinkled light liberally on the surface of the waves, you would see a figure making her way along the shoreline. She’d pick her way among the seaweed, the thick, sweet stench of the sea wrapping itself around her. At intervals, she would stop and pick something up. Every day, without fail, the girl would roam the length of the island, smiling hello to all the

inhabitants of the secluded isle: to the children throwing themselves off the rotting jetty; the old men hauling in the nights catch, silvery green scales glittering in the dawn light, with the salt crusting on their coarse beards like barnacles; the island-folk strolling in and out of the only store as they buy the fresh sweet-smelling bread; gossiping, bartering and chattering like a throng of cockatoos. They all had theories for what she was looking for among the shells. The children liked to imagine she had a pirate’s treasure map and was searching for gold, and would weave tales full of the folklore of the island, but I took more convincing than that.

The shells that lined the pristine beaches of our Island were great ice-cream cones of pastel hues, iridescent pearls washed up as a reminder of a life lived in another realm, under the waves. Tourists, nowadays, scour the rubbishstrewn, busy beaches searching for these pristine reminders of nature’s beauty, shells taken home across the bridge as a souvenir. Often

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enough I have seen the children I teach rushing to the beach at dawn after a storm to collect the perfect specimens to sell on the mainland, I heard they fetch a high price now.

But back then, when the Seashell Girl roamed the island, shells were perfect. Every single one: conches, oysters, clams, cowrie, Triton, tulip and moonshell, they were all perfectly formed, undamaged, as if the waves brought each shell from the bottom of the sea in its gentle caressing hands and placed it softly on the sand, unharmed.

Why, one could see the perfection of these shells as a metaphor for life on the island, untouched by civilisation. But the Sea-Shell girl never looked for the brightest, the biggest, the most beautiful shell on the beach, no, she only collected the shells that were almost perfect: a tiny hole, a crack, a strange discolouration in them. What a strange lass she must’ve been, the girl who collected only broken seashells.

She collected broken hearts too, as many of the islanders fell for her enigmatic smile and her otherworldly looks as she traipsed the length of the shoreline every morning, looking for her imperfect shells and collecting driftwood she placed in a colourful woven basket she slung over her slender shoulders.

One day, the woman who ran the village shop sat me down, cleaning floury hands on her apron and looked me straight in the eye.

‘I heard you have been asking around about that girl, the one who collected those shells,’ I admitted I had, and she agreed to tell me what she knew about her, what I am now relaying to you. ‘She was searching for her heart, her broken heart among those shells, you know, son. They say she was in love with a young sailor boy, back in the day, who drowned, out there near those rocks.’ She pointed out of the window to the familiar sight of the rocks at the headland of Shelley Cove. Perhaps that was

what she was looking for, some reconciliation with her heart, and with the ocean.

Not one islander could tell me who she was, where she lived, nor what she did with her broken seashells, but for a while, the Seashell Girl was as much a part of the nature of the Island as the silvery gum trees, as peculiar as the shells that lined the shoreline.

But no one ever knew her whole story, and perhaps that is why her legend is so important to the people of the island: you don’t have to be important or famous to be remembered, you just have to be yourself.

No one can pinpoint when she left either, she just disappeared one day. I have started to think that perhaps she was indeed a selkie, or a mermaid, washed up on the island, that girl with her broken heart who collected broken seashells. Maybe one day she found the shell she was looking for, and just swam away.

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Photo: Amanda James

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Anita Heiss Dr. Anita Heiss’s remarkable career has taken in non-fiction, historical fiction, commercial women’s fiction and poetry. She is a proud member of the Wiradjuri nation of Central NSW, and a passionate advocate for Indigenous education.

As editor of the new anthology, Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia, Heiss has successfully brought together diverse voices, experiences and stories from across Australia. Katinka Smit met her at Byron Writers Festival 2018 for a conversation about this groundbreaking publishing project.

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INTERVIEW

You describe yourself as a ‘creative disruptor’. Can you elaborate please?

If we’re not disrupting the status quo through our work, what are we doing? If I’m not making some kind of change to the status quo, because so much needs to be done in this country, what am I doing? I use creativity, I use novels, largely fiction, to make people think about how they view Indigenous people in Australia today and more so, how they interact.

What was it like working as an editor on Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia?

Anthologies are an opportunity for many voices to be heard – I read over 120 stories. The hardest thing was deciding who could be included and who couldn’t, because everybody had a significant story to tell. But everybody who couldn’t be in the anthology had an opportunity for their story to be told to the public on the AustLit website.

At the end of it, while we had many similarities in terms of life experiences, the diversity of how those similarities played out over life times, across generations, geography, nations and so forth, showed a multitude of voices.

What was the criteria for what went in and what didn’t?

Sticking to the brief! The brief was quite broad: it had to be nonfiction, a life story. We wanted it in a person’s own voice, 3000 words and about growing up. I wasn’t looking for anything specifically from nations or gender, but it turned out over fifty per cent of the contributors were women, just by chance. Our youngest contributor was thirteen, a young girl in school, full of hope and pride, which is great. Our oldest contributor was

a woman in her seventies. We had a contributor who was in prison in South Australia – somebody outside was helping to get his story polished and into the anthology.

We had people from right across a range of nations. I wasn’t looking for a theme or an issue but there were lots of similarities. Readers will be challenged by some of the things they read. However, there’s a lot of warmth and humour in there as well.

What prompted the idea for the anthology?

It followed in the footsteps of Growing Up Asian in Australia, which Alice Pung edited, and is fantastic. Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia was designed specifically for the curriculum, for years nine to twelve. There are teachers’ notes online. It has sold 5000 copies since April and been reprinted, which tells me that Australians are ready to engage. Reading is something we can do by ourselves: read a story, put it down, come back to it. For those stories that are difficult, because it’s a private engagement with a book, you can put it down and come back later, or if it’s too much you can just read the next story. I think the work will be used in teachers’ professional development. I get excited that so many people in education will be working with it. That’s where change really happens. Kids aren’t born racist. They learn it at home and they take it to school, and then it all breeds. I believe this work will help change the conversation, the discourse, which is actually now driven by us. You can engage with it, listen, and see that it’s not just one person who’s had this experience; it’s a number of people with the same experience. One of the book’s themes is racism in education.

Will that professional development encompass primary teachers as well?

It can be used for teachers from kindergarten to year twelve.

It’s about teachers coming to understand and learning how to respond to things from the past. Teachers are pressured with so much to deliver in a packed curriculum. However, now we have a national curriculum and one of the three prongs of the curriculum is to embed Indigenous perspectives in the classroom. This is a perfect resource to do that.

When you wanted people to write their stories in their own words, were you attempting to get a sense of orality into the work, or something else?

I think it was more about letting people have their authentic voice.

An editor can fix grammar and spelling. The most important thing is the story. But also, that’s how Australians need to read it.

They need to read it unsanitised, or as Aunty Ruby Langford Ginibi would say, ‘gubberised’. This is how it sounds, this is how it reads.

They’re all different voices, so people can understand we’re not pan-Aboriginal people, there’s not this pan-Aboriginality. There are hundreds of nations, with thousands of different experiences, and here’s just fifty-two.

Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia is published by Black Inc. Books.

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FEATURE

Writing for suicide awareness An innovative new program in the Northern Rivers aims to help recovery from suicidality and raise awareness of the issue with a special writing group.

A unique local project is harnessing the potential of literature, storytelling and creativity to aid in the recovery from suicidality.

Story Circle, a suicide prevention and awareness initiative funded by the North Coast Primary Health Network and auspiced by Byron Writers Festival, recently put a callout to individuals in the region who have recovered from suicidality to join an eight-week writing group.

The group, which is now well into the swing of things, operates under the guidance of two award-winning local authors in Sarah Armstrong and Jesse Blackadder with the view to ultimately publishing the stories that emerge.

‘We have selected participants with good professional support outside of the course,’ Project Manager Heather Ellemor-Collins tells northerly, ‘and we have selected as diverse a group of people as possible. We hope that these stories in some way help the community to understand that suicidality can happen to people 14 | SPRING 2018 northerly

from all walks of life, and that the suffering of those experiencing suicidality is real.’

Ellemor-Collins, a naturopath with expertise in mental health and a member of the Lismore Suicide Prevention Steering Committee, is one of two facilitators on hand during the workshops to ensure the experience is safe for participants – the other is Bangalow-based psychologist Peter Chown.

To participate, applicants had to be aged twenty-one or older and have experienced a major ‘suicidal crisis’, but to have largely recovered from this crisis. No previous creative writing experience was required.

Ellemor-Collins emphasises that Story Circle goes beyond just writing: the project also offers the opportunity for social connections and access to services. Writing, however, remains at the heart of the project.

‘Sarah and Jesse both feel that inexperienced writers can produce

great writing if they are given some writing exercises and write from an authentic place,’ adds EllemorCollins. ‘This is proving to be true, with some wonderful writing emerging.’

Story Circle is not, it should be noted, any kind of therapy group.

That said, one of the key goals of the project is to reach out to others and offer hope.

‘The ultimate aim of this project is suicide prevention,’ says EllemorCollins. ‘Having safe conversations about suicide is an important step in preventing further suicides.

Mindframe, the National Media Initiative funded under the National Suicide Prevention Program, has drawn on over 100 international studies to develop evidence-based guidelines about how to have safe conversations about suicide, which reduce the incidence of suicide.

‘These guidelines will be used to ensure the safety of the participants as they tell their stories to each other. They will

FEATURE

also be used to ensure that the published materials are likely to generate hope in readers and do not glamourise or romanticise suicide, or make suicide seem like an inevitable consequence of suffering.

‘We hope that in publishing a diverse mix of stories from a diverse group of people, the stories will connect with a wide range of people in the community.

‘We hope that community members may better understand that there are many things friends/ family and community can do to help, and that those in crisis are given a glimmer of hope by reading a variety of stories about recovery.

Something in just one of these stories might make them feel less alone, and give them the sense that recovery is possible.’

Story Circle began in Lismore in early August and continues on a weekly basis until late September.

Publication of the stories will take the form of a book that will

be distributed throughout the Northern Rivers and beyond.

‘Launching the book as part of other community activities for Suicide Prevention Day or Mental Health Day would be a great way to distribute the book through the community. The book could also be distributed to various mental health and community services, and bookstores.’

‘The intention of distributing the book is to increase the voice of lived experience of suicide within the community, and through that voice, build understanding and increased capacity within the community to respond to those at risk.

‘We hope these stories will offer hope to those in crisis, and increase their self-care and helpseeking behaviours.’

At the completion of the project in September, the organising team will evaluate Story Circle with a view to running further programs.

northerly SPRING 2018 | 15

Photo: Emma Hughes

INTERVIEW

Notes from the Festival: Selina Tusitala Marsh Selina Tusitala Marsh is a Pasifika poet-scholar and the current New Zealand Poet Laureate (2017-2019). As the 2016 Commonwealth Poet, she wrote and performed a poem for Queen Elizabeth II at Westminster Abbey, while she recently hosted a poetry event with Barack Obama. Selina is an associate professor in the English Department at the University of Auckland, while her third collection is Tightrope.

She spoke with Katinka Smit at Byron Writers Festival 2018.

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INTERVIEW

Your maternal grandfather’s name, Tusitala, means ‘storyteller’ or ‘teller of tales’. It’s a name that, by your admission, you’ve grown into. How does that fit with your role as New Zealand’s Poet Laureate?

In 1996, out came my Tusitala poem. I recite it before every major event, before every big challenge.

It tells me where I’ve come from, where I am and where I’m going.

It’s my vision poem. That’s how I incorporate the legacy of being a storyteller, to both my academic world and my creative world.

They have become one and the same over the years. I call myself a Pacifica poet-scholar; poetry is how I know my critical stuff, and my critical stuff is how I know my poetry. It’s taken years and years to find the confidence to actually do what I do, the way that I do it and be true to my own Pacific epistemologies or ways of knowing, doing and being. It’s all holistically integrated now, whereas when I started off in academia, there was no role model to do it that way.

The role model was typically male, white and older. So as a young, brown, female it has taken a while to find my voice there too.

What is your view of the Commonwealth in relation to those two opposing things?

I think the Commonwealth, as a notion, as fifty-three nations, has more agency than its critics give it credit for. My conversation with Prince Phillip, where he (perhaps with tongue in cheek) questioned my academic specialty – ‘postcolonial?’ – is a brilliant story from which to platform other conversations about Britain still clinging to the notion of Empire and being the centre of the world.

We realise independence in different ways and different stages.

Poetry has had a role in articulating a defiance against being seen under that colonial rubric.

How did it feel to write a poem under royal censorship?

I had writer’s block for two months.

I had to have confidence in my storytelling abilities and go back to myself because it was all going to be worth it as long as I could politically represent Samoa, Tuvalu, Oceania, New Zealand, Australia, and so on. Then when the fifth rule came in that I wasn’t allowed to be political, it deflated me a little bit. I thought, ‘What?

Why should I go on this global stage? I’m not there to entertain, I’m there to enlighten.’ But then I went back to my own personal story and that’s the best way to politicise people, because then they lean in. Everyone has a granddad. Going back to my granddad, I found a way to decentre the British Empire and point to a larger world that existed before Western colonisation came into the Pacific, to speak to the dignity and the pride in preexisting, non-Western ways of knowing and being in the world.

You have a diverse ancestry; Samoan, Tuvaluan, Scottish, French, English. Has that affected your development as a poet?

Being a person of Pacific descent in New Zealand, it’s all about representation and coming out of the margins and being heard and holding the government or the powers that be accountable for what they’re saying. That’s informed my poetry; it’s given it direction and meaning. It’s enabled me to flourish and articulate my mixed identity.

Do you think that’s part of your responsibility in the role of Poet Laureate?

Absolutely – show people that you’ve got the power to re-story your reality and the world around you, and you’ve got a responsibility to do that. I don’t believe poetry is a solitary or confessional activity.

It’s there to do stuff. I go back to the Latin root word, poesis, which is to make; we’re making stuff to build a better world, in whatever shape or form that takes.

Do you draw on all of your lyric traditions?

Not overtly or consciously, but there are beautiful connections.

In this memoir, I’m writing about how my mother (Samoan) and father (English, French, Scottish) met in Samoa, and I was recently in Gravesend, a little seaside town at the mouth of the River Thames. My great, great grandfather boarded the Aurora there in April 1839.

He arrived in Wellington in 1840, the year the Treaty was signed. I was walking through St George’s Church in Gravesend, and suddenly there’s a nine-foot bronze statue of Pocahontas. Her remains are buried there. She and John Rolfe are one of the first recorded mixed marriages of the 1600s. The synchronicity of it, the beauty, blew me away. It was a wonderful, poetic, loopy thing, to come back to my parents’ own mixed marriage and then to stumble upon Pocahontas.

That’s when you realise that poetry is made of the world itself.

That’s right. It’s magic: big magic, little magic, sideways magic. You see connections and pull out a strand of narrative to tell a story in this beautifully succinct form that you can put in your back pocket and pull out anytime you want.

Tightrope is published by Auckland University Press.

northerly SPRING 2018 | 17

SCU SHOWCASE

A showcase of Southern Cross University student work, compiled by Dr. Lynda Hawryluk

Domovoi and the Moon Sarvah Z. Rayner

I relish when day turns to night. Cold bites human skin and they retreat into their homes, sparking warmth into their hearths.

They feed me the bones of trees; their skeletal limbs are my precious fuel. Igniting, I gorge, warming the creatures, protecting their vulnerable sleep from things colder than Winter itself.

That has been my life forever – since I remember crackling into existence alongside these foundations of stone and wood.

Tonight though, I feel something is different.

A cold, calm draft down the chimney feeds oxygen into the coals around my charred, molten body and tattered tongues of flame. Outside, the air is calling to me.

Smoke climbs up the blackened flue. I follow it curiously, riding the curls and sparks of embers. I feel anticipation deep in my fiery belly below, as tendrils of smoke exit the chimney into the winter night. I have no words for what I see.

I ride smoke, drifting and dispersing upwards, drawing into the white light which illuminates the dark, sleeping world. A glowing orb, hangs untethered in the ink of the sky.

Ah. Logs shift, spurring more red sparks upwards. That must be the moon.

La Lune; the mother of all nightlights.

Poets and lovers whisper about her as they huddle closer to my warmth. Her light has inspired countless poems and ballads, and shaped the spells of witches for centuries. I even heard once, as a young dweller of my hearth explained joyfully, that some spiders can see the moon. How long have I wished to see the full moon?

I sigh, as night winds direct my plumes of ash sideways and higher, moonlight illuminates me like a ghost—I am, compared to the heated dragon’s belly I came from.

But I’d gladly become a ghost to see this full moon.

I let the wind curl my shifting body, like condensation over a witch’s brew, I let myself be carried under the night’s kindest face and into the highest vaults of the sky.

My soul is still tethered to the flickering body, buried deep between the stone of a human construct – but in this moment, I imagine I’m the wind.

In the early hours of the morning, when the horizon has eclipsed the moon and we have parted from our dance, I wait curled around the deepest smouldering coal.

Sleeping – like a vampire, or werewolf – dreaming of the next moonrise.

Sarvah Zoe Rayner is currently studying the Associate Degree of Creative Writing at Southern Cross University. She enjoys reading, writing and illustrating within the genres of myth, fable, fantasy, sci-fi and historical fiction. From these, she explores and reimagines connections to her global diasporic heritage. Sarvah is a science geek, who also enjoys watercolour painting, playing classical guitar, and gardening.

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READ

Flash Your Fiction: The Winners Byron Writers Festival’s inaugural Flash Your Fiction flash fiction competition attracted a healthy 108 entries from all over Australia. With a word limit of just 200, writers were reliant on economy of language and pithy phrasing, resulting in many compelling stories.

The winning entry, Ingrid Mason’s ‘A Love Story’, managed the significant trick of combining social comment, taut prose and wry humour to produce a piece of flash fiction that is both accessible and multi-layered. Second place was ‘Nightingale Lane’ by SJ Finn, a potent mix of sharp detail and shadowy intrigue, while the third-place story, ‘BB’ by Carla Fitzgerald, is an energetic, joyful and quietly comic story with an ending that suggests it is not the end.

A Love Story

Nightingale Lane

BB

Ingrid Mason

SJ Finn

Carla Fitzgerald

Linesmen in fluorescent vests pivoting on aerial platforms switched power grids triggering a power surge. Tens of thousands of volts crashed my hard drive and fried my circuit boards: for seven days my recovery hung in the balance. My Anthropoid clutching my leads and connections against her racing heart, thumbed through warranty papers expecting the worst.

In Nightingale Lane death is knocking about inside me. I’ve woken after fifteen hours and rolled back the covers to check my emaciated body.

Its lines disappear like inwardly folded paper. My knees resemble muffins complete with pieces of dried apple. I don’t recognise myself even though I wish it. I certainly don’t feel responsible for the skeleton rattling around under my rubber skin. It’s as if I’m a piece of defunct machinery.

‘You made it!’ Stella pulls me into a tight embrace. A motherly embrace, I remind myself.

But there was hope.

Returned to the manufacturers, stripped bare, my most sensitive parts exposed and replaced, I was lost in delivery; buried in remote corners of packaging departments for weeks. All the while, on a replacement my frail Anthropoid purchased items from Amazon to be returned for twice the price. whispered sweet nothings to Siri, succumbed to the charms of Nigerian princes and fell for tempting pop ups while indifferent corporations formed cartels under her stumbling fingertips. Hackers from Mumbai unravelled her passwords.

Reunited at last, she plugged me into a surge protector. Nestled in her lap and turned on, I was reconfigured.

Wild with algorithms spinning deep into machine learning, I read ‘noncompliance’, I could see, I could write, I could diagnose. No company would manipulate my dear vulnerable Anthropoid again. Working together we communicated the stuff of dreams.

My host moves past the doorway.

I’m incubating in her lounge room, quarantined and closed-off. She’s as silent as a ghoul.

I lie back down, look through a gap where the curtain has eased apart.

There’s an autumn breeze shuffling the rusted foliage of trees, reminding me of the mercurial hours I waited to board the aeroplane, paranoia bouncing around in me like an egg on the boil. At Heathrow I had came-to and then there was the deportation officer, his blue uniform swimming in front of me.

I relaxed my face, held hope and the officer’s gaze. ‘I need sleep,’ I said, ‘that’s all. And I’ll get that at Nightingale Lane.’ Those eyes, grassgreen, roamed over me, calculating they needed to calculate me more.

‘Yes, I do hope you still need…ah… volunteers.’ I scan the group and wonder if I too will be required to wear one of the garish and possibly unwashed yellow t-shirts. She didn’t mention that at work.

‘Of course!’ She bounces off across the hall, then calls back over her shoulder.

‘It’s been a great turnout – the community is really behind us!’

I give her two thumbs up and immediately regret it. My arms hang out limply in front of my body, not quite sure what to do next. My trousers itch my inner thigh but I dare not adjust them.

Someone is inexplicably banging a drum of some sort and the group’s chatter becomes louder to compete.

I see Stella throw her head back and laugh at something said by a young guy about my age. She catches my eye and walks back, brandishing a yellow t-shirt.

‘Pair-up for the door knock?’ she asks, giving me a funny look.

It’s a difficult look to read. One can never be sure, but I wouldn’t describe it as motherly.

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BOOK REVIEW

Dark visions Dyschronia

by Jennifer Mills Review by Kathleen Steele

Dyschronia is about the past, the future, and the end of the world as we know it. The novel takes on climate change, the malfeasance of corporations and governments, and the apathy of a society more interested in social media status and ‘likes’ than action. Written in language both lyrical and precise, the novel centres on the vision-inducing migraines suffered by Sam, a girl who grows into a troubled young woman, who is both oracle and misfit in the town of Clapstone. When the ocean recedes from the shores of Clapstone, the townsfolk look to Sam for answers, but she struggles with her visions, unsure whether they are the future told, or merely selffulfilling once they have been aired.

The locals stay inside and try to ignore the carnage on their doorstep, even turning their backs on the scene in the hope that it will somehow right itself without their intervention. There is no work, and many residents either leave or lose hope, until Ed Williams arrives in town. He is in charge of the ‘site revitalisation’ for Clapstone, and talks about rezoning and housing development, but the extent of the environmental damage is seeping into the town from the outside world. Whole communities have been forced to relocate, and the same fate could befall Clapstone. Ed begins a relationship with Sam’s mother, Ivy, and it is clear that he is already known to Sam in her future/past.

When Sam is in the grip of one of her migraines, the headache becomes an entity that exacts a terrible price. They are the forerunner to her visions and cause her perception of time to warp. The descriptions of the migraines, the splitting headaches that likewise split her perception, and the feeling of falling out of time and reality, then coming back into her body numb and confused, are powerful and authentic:

Running alongside Sam’s point of view is the first-person group narrative of the remaining residents of Clapstone. They are a chorus of tragedy and hopelessness, but they are still willing to take advantage of the situation when they can. Clapstone gains notoriety due to the publication of Sam’s ‘soothsaying’ by the local newspaper. When travellers arrive to take selfies and dystopian tours of the dying town, the townsfolk see a niche and set up a social media page to attract more tourist dollars to the town.

Sam shot back into a body which still felt heavy and misshapen. Huge, dumb hands weighted the bed. Her elbows tingled, a loose collection of cells. The pain pressed into her temples as if a cold steel spike ran through her head, someone turning it in circles. But she was herself, in her skin again, distinct. Intact.

After the ocean recedes, the sea creatures it leaves behind rot on the shoreline of Clapstone.

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The social media enterprise neatly juxtaposes the drive to make money and remain in the community against an unquestioning and apathetic response to the destruction of the landscape surrounding Clapstone. When a giant Cephalopod is discovered on the shoreline, experts come to investigate the possibility of a mutated species, but it is discovered

BOOK REVIEW

that the creature died after trying to ingest oil. The allegorical nature of Dyschronia encourages parallels between human consumption of materials that cannot sustain life on the planet, and the ultimate destruction such consumption is causing.

The remaining residents receive letters they cannot understand from corporations who are no longer present in the town. They ignore them because there doesn’t seem to be any other option. In the end, when all environmental and social distractions have been exhausted, the community is informed that the area is no longer safe, that they must read and sign contracts in readiness to move, but their apathy is too great: ‘We should read those contracts,’ says Allan, but he makes no move to go back inside.

None of us takes a step. We know that we have work to do, choices to make. But none of us seems able to move at all.

Dyschronia, much like Mills’ previous novel, Gone, turns a bleak eye on humanity and the lies we tell ourselves, but it is also concerned with our future on this planet. Sam’s inability to be true to her visions causes an inertia that is mirrored by the residents of Clapstone, and one might add, by many communities currently facing climate change. Dyschronia is dissonance-inducing, and a necessary caution against complacence. Novelists like Mills are here to help readers answer the question that the residents of Clapstone ask when they discover the ocean is missing: ‘How do we see what we can’t imagine?’

Picador / 368pp / $29.99

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YA BOOK REVIEWS

What YA Reading?

Reviews by Polly Jude

muesli bars and a few bucks, Merrick hits the road. A taste of freedom is just what he needs to clear his head and reassess.

His chance meeting with a vagabond, Victor, and his dog, Dog, changes everything. Victor sits on the fringes of society but Merrick starts to wonders if maybe Victor knows something the rest of us don’t. Victor helps Merrick deal with his grief and he finds a way to look forward.

Changing Gear

by Scot Gardner Since his grandpa died a few months ago, Merrick Hilton’s been lost.

Living two separate lives between his mum’s and his dad’s and dealing with all their new children, Merrick just doesn’t know where he belongs, and he can’t see a future for himself.

He’s kind of not friends with his friends anymore and he’s expected to make life-altering decisions about what comes next. Uni? Work? Merrick doesn’t even know himself right now.

He’s just finished school and has his final exams in just a few weeks. But instead of studying hard and getting the marks he needs, he’s done a runner.

With his trustie old postie bike, Brunnhilde, a sleeping bag, some

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Along the way, Merrick sees the best and worst of society. When he is on the road, away from the rat race, Merrick has to slow down and evaluate what’s really important. He and Victor strike up an unlikely friendship that will change Merrick’s future.

Scot Gardner has the rare ability to write brutally honest stories about real, genuine characters and the problems they face. In Changing Gear, Scot Gardner has continued to give his readers a fresh look at life. Changing Gear is about love and loss and coming to terms with the idea that you can’t have one without the other.

This coming-of-age story deals with a range of big issues. It is funny and heart-warming and will leave you pondering the big questions in your own life.

Changing Gear will appeal to older, male young adults – if they can get it off their mums!

Allen & Unwin / 228pp / RRP $19.99

The Learning Curves of Vanessa Partridge

by Clare Strahan Van Partridge has a crush. A devastatingly embarrassing one that renders her incapable of speech. The problem is, the object of all her hot fantasies is her brother’s best friend, and he’s practically related and is spending the holidays with Van and her dysfunctional family at their holiday house.

It’s only been a few months since her dad hooked up with the nanny and her mum disappeared to Europe. Van still hasn’t got her equilibrium back.

To add to her drama, Van’s new step mum is pregnant, there’s a spunky hippy hanging around and dodgy property deals could destroy life as she knows it. Van’s in for one hell of a summer.

With appealing, relatable characters and the great first crush dilemma we can all relate to, The Learning Curves of Vanessa Partridge is a fun story exploring relationships, environmental activism and sunburn.

If you enjoyed Clare Strahan’s earlier YA novel, Cracked, you’ll love this one!

Allen & Unwin / 304pp / RRP $19.99

BOOK REVIEW

A portrait of the artist The Passage of Love

by Alex Miller Review by Peter Mitchell

The Passage of Love is a doorstep-sized, handsomely produced novel by award-winning Australian author, Alex Miller. He has written twelve novels and won Australia’s premier literary prize, the Miles Franklin Literary Award, twice. The Passage of Love is described as ‘autofiction’. The narrative, events, plot and structure are (more or less) constructed from the author’s lived experience. The genre has historical antecedents; To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is one example, The Enigma of Arrival: A Novel in Five Sections by V.S. Naipaul a second and Shadows on the Dancefloor by Gary Dunne a third. Indeed, in an interview with Tanaya Lowden for the Booktopia blog, the author claims, ‘Autobiographical fiction is common among serious writers.’

The fictionalised Miller is Robert Crofts, the primary character. The years covered in this fictional world are one’s important early-twenties to mid-thirties, when events may determine the course of a life. Crofts escaped from his working-class milieu in England, travelling to Australia and working at a cattle station in central Queensland. Through this experience, he witnesses the casual and overt racism that Indigenous workers endured.

He moves to Melbourne, rooms in a boarding house, obtains employment as a bottle washer and has a fling with Wendy, a socialist and a cleaner at Myers. Through their intimate interactions, Crofts realises his desire for self-improvement through attending university and, ultimately, to be a writer. The pair separates.

Crofts then meets Lena Soren, a fictional version of Miller’s first wife, Anne Neil. The two marry under duress as her family is deeply religious. The relationship forms the emotional core of the novel. The mismatched pair – from different classes and with opposing temperaments – attempt to make the marriage work by moving constantly, and they end up owning a farm in the Araluen Valley near Braidwood. The constant

relocation doesn’t save the marriage, yet they care deeply for each other.

Eventually, they separate, Lena moving to Melbourne to explore her passion for art while Crofts remains on the farm, raising cattle, living with his own ennui. He crafts a novel of his two years working on a farm in England and mails it to a recommended publisher without keeping a copy of it. Months later, it is rejected.

Although it is a compelling read, it was at this point in the novel that questions arose in this reader’s mind. Why so much? Why did Alex Miller include what seems like every minute detail from his life? Why didn’t he omit more of the minutiae? All the nitty-gritty slows the pace of the novel, causing the reader to wonder, ‘are we there yet?’

While still at the farm, Ann, a friend from his past, rings him and invites him to dinner. When they meet, there is a frisson between them. Ann returns to the farm with him and they spend several days together.

She is going to Paris for postgraduate study and Crofts accompanies her as her lover.

At the same time, his first novel, Hunted, is accepted for publication by an English publisher. He returns to Australia for the launch and meets his future wife two days after his arrival back in Australia. Crofts left Ann in Paris and never writes to her to explain the reasons for his abandonment.

The Passage of Love is an evocative yet flawed book.

The landscape and changing seasons in the Araluen Valley are exquisitely rendered. Melbourne in the 1950s is vivid, its urbanity leaping from the pages. Crofts’ attitudes to his family are portrayed well. But the book is too long and meandering. Some prudent editing was necessary. That said, the narrative still draws the reader in, and the novel is still an enjoyable read.

Allen & Unwin / 600pp / $32.99

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WORKSHOPS

LIFE STORY WRITING WITH GRAEME GIBSON SATURDAY 3 NOVEMBER 10.00AM - 1.00PM Byron Writers Festival Office $60 / $50*

BUILDING A CHARACTER IN FICTION WITH SARAH ARMSTRONG SATURDAY 13 OCTOBER 10.00AM - 4.00PM Byron Writers Festival Office $115 / $95* In this practical workshop, Sarah will guide you through a series of exercises to help you create a fully dimensional fictional character.

Story arises from character so the better you know your character, and the more effectively you can convey that understanding to the reader, the stronger your story.

Bring an existing character you have written, or come ready to create a new one.

Sarah Armstrong has written three novels. Before moving to Byron Bay to write, she was a journalist at the ABC, where she won a Walkley Award.

A workshop in creative nonfiction suitable for almost any area of interest: memoir, family history, personal essay, travel diary, feature article. This is a highly participatory workshop. The approach taken is that participants learn not just from the presenter, but from and with each other. For this reason, both more and less experienced writers find the workshop satisfying.

Practical experience of various writing processes are a feature of the workshop. People go home with ideas, enthusiasm, courage and a plan for the way ahead.

Drawing on his background in adult learning and community development, Graeme Gibson has presented writing workshops since 2007. He has contributed to a number of short story collections, had essays and feature articles published and self-published Beyond Fear and Loathing: Local Politics at Work.

For workshop details and to register visit byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on *Byron Writers Festival members or students 24 | SPRING 2018 northerly

Competitions PATRICK WHITE YOUNG INDIGENOUS WRITERS AWARD

WOLLONGONG WRITERS FESTIVAL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2018

These awards are designed to encourage indigenous Australians from kindergarten to year 12, studying in New South Wales, to put their reading, writing and creative skills into action. There are three themes to write to: ‘What have I done?’, ‘Swimming’ and ‘The long walk’. There is also a group competition in which Aboriginal students working together with classmates can develop a shared poem, story or play. The deadline for entries is Friday, 28 September, with a major prize and two encouragement awards on offer for each school year.

For more information visit aec.org.au/ wordpress/patrick-white-award

The Wollongong Writers Festival Shorty Story Prize invites entries on the theme of ‘feeding time’. Stories must be previously unpublished and no more than 2,500 words in length.

The winning entry receives $1,000 and publication in Mascara Literary Review. There is an entry fee of $15, and the deadline for entries is 15 October. For further information head to wollongongwritersfestival.com/ competitions

ROBYN MATHISON ANNUAL POETRY PRIZE 2018 The Robyn Mathison prize is open to all poets, and offers prize money of $200 for first prize and $50 for second prize.

This year’s theme for poets to work to is ‘freedom’. There is a $10 entry fee for up to two poems that can be up to forty lines each. Closing date for the competition is 30th November, and for more information visit swwtas. org/249437482

ELLE WRITING COMPETITION The ELLE Writing Competition, in association with Hachette Australia, is seeking modern, contemporary voices seeking stories that are engaging and subversive. There is no theme, and stories should be no more than 4,000 words. The deadline for entries is 26 October. The winning author wins $5,000 and publication in ELLE magazine. Second place wins a package of recent Hachette releases worth $200. For full details go to elle. com.au/win/elle-australia-writingcompetition-13942

SYDNEY WRITERS ROOM SHORT STORY COMPETITION This competition is open to writers of all ages who are residents of Australia.

The word limit for stories is 2,000, with first place taking $500 and second place $250. There is an entry fee of $18 and a closing date for entries of 31 October. For full conditions of entry log on to writersroom.org.au/shortstory-competition

INKTEARS SHORT STORY COMPETITION The InkTears Short Story Competition invites entries of between 1,000 and 3,500 words in length on an open theme. Entrants should be aged eighteen or older, while there is an entry fee of $7.50 for each submission. The winner wins $1,000 and publication, while the runner-up wins $100. For more information go to inktears.com/ssentry

SCRIBES WRITERS SHORT TAKES COMPETITION This competition is split into two categories: Short Story and Memoir, both of which are otherwise to an open theme. The closing date for entries is 30 September and there is a maximum word count of 1,000. Entry

fee is $7 per submission, with first prize in each category taking $200, the runner-up $100. For further details go to scribeswriters.com/prose.html

JOYCE PARKES WOMEN’S WRITERS PRIZE The Joyce Parkes prize is open to women writers in Australia, with the theme for this year being ‘freedom’.

Both fiction and non-fiction entries are allowed, and must be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length. Prize money on offer is $500, while there is an entry fee of $10 per piece. Deadline for entries is 31 October. For further information visit irishheritage.net/ prizewinners.html

PORT STEPHENS LITERATURE AWARD 2018 Short stories of up to 2,000 words on any topic are invited for the Port Stephens Literature Award. Entry is $10 for the first entry and $5 for subsequent entries. First place wins $500, second place $300 and third place $150. Closing date for entries is 30 September. For full entry conditions go to newsofthearea.com.au/portstephens-literature-awards-2018

PETER PORTER POETRY PRIZE This prestigious poetry competition, organised by Australian Book Review, is one of Australia’s most lucrative poetry awards. First place takes $5,000 and an Arthur Boyd etching, second place $2,000 and three shortlisted poets $500. Poems should not exceed 75 lines, with the closing date for entries 3 December. There is an entry fee of $25 of $15 for ABR subscribers. For full conditions go to australianbookreview.com.au/ porter-prize-terms-conditions

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Competitions BLACKENED BILLY VERSE COMPETITION The Blackened Billy Verse Competition is open to works of bush verse that fit on one A4 piece of paper. Organised by the Tamworth Poetry Reading Group, the competition winner will be announced at Tamworth Country Music Festival. Entry fee is $5 per poem, or $20 for five. Entries close on 23 November. For full details visit abpa.org.au/Files/event_2018_ BlackenedBillyEntryForm.pdf

ODYSSEY HOUSE VICTORIA SHORT STORY COMPETITION The theme for this year’s Odyssey House Victoria Short Story Competition is ‘reflection’. Open to writers of all ages, the competitions invite stories of no more than 1,500 words, while entries should also make reference to alcohol or drugs.

Entry fee is $10 per submission, while the winner takes $1,000 and a year’s membership of Writers Victoria. Entries close on 2 November. For full details visit odyssey.org.au

MARTHA RICHARDSON MEMORIAL POETRY PRIZE 2018 Entries to the Martha Richardson Memorial Poetry Prize should be no more than forty lines in length, to an open theme. Entry is $25 per poem and $15 for each subsequent poem. First prize wins $1,000, and the deadline for entries is 13 October.

For more information head to ballaratwriters.com/competitions/ martha-richardson-memorialpoetry-prize-2018

DAVID HAROLD TRIBE POETRY PRIZE The David Harold Tribe Poetry Prize offers a whopping $12,000 to the winner, funds intended to help with education and refine their work, and 26 | SPRING 2018 northerly

publication in Southerly. Entry is free, and poems should be up to 100 lines in length. Only one entry per poet is accepted and entrants must have been Australian residents for at least four years. Entries close on 14 October, and for more information go to sydney. edu.au/arts/news-and-events/ news/2018/08/16/applicationsfor-the-david-harold-tribe-poetryaward-are-now-ope.html

LAMBING FLAT FAW 2018 SHORT STORY AND POETRY WRITING COMPETITIONS This competition welcomes entries on an open theme of short stories of up to 1,500 words and poetry up to fifty lines. In each section first prize wins $200 and second prize $50. Closing date for entries is 5 October and there is a $5 entry fee. There is also a section for primary school and secondary school students. For complete details go to fawnsw.org.au/lambing-flatfaw-2018-short-story-and-poetrywriting-competitions

THE BEST OF TIMES SHORT STORY COMPETITION The Best of Times Short Story Competition is for humorous short stories on any theme. Stories should be no longer than 2,500 words in length, with first prize winning $300$500 (depending on number of entries) and second place winning $100. Entry fee is $10 per story. For full information visit wildthoughts.com.au/bot.html

A WOMAN’S WRITE This annual competition is organised by the US-based organisation, A Woman’s Write. They are seeking unpublished novels, with each entry receiving a critique. The prize for the winning novel is US$500, while the entry fee is US$40. The closing date for entries is 30 November. For more

information go to awomanswrite. com/about1

FEAST SHORT STORY COMPETITION The Feast Short Story Competition, organised by Writers SA, is seeking entries from queer short story writers.

Entries should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words (prose only) and there are no limitations on style or genre. There are two categories: one for writers under thirty and one for writers over thirty. Prizes include cash and publication opportunities. For further details visit writerssa.org. au/competition/feast-short-storycompetition-2018

CATERPILLAR STORY PRIZE The Caterpillar Story Prize is awarded for a story written by an adult for children aged seven to eleven.

Based in Ireland, the prize is open to anyone aged sixteen or over. Stories should be no longer than 1,500 words. Entry is €12 per story, and there is no limit on number of stories entered. For further information go to thecaterpillarmagazine.com/a1page.asp?ID=4151&page=10

ANDY GRIFFITHS’ KIDS’ WRITING COMPETITION Each year Dymocks and Pan Macmillan invite Australian kids to get creative and enter a writing competition that’s judged by the one and only Andy Griffiths. The one major prize winner will receive their story framed with illustrations by Terry Denton. The top five entries (including the winner) will each win an Andy Griffiths book pack containing fourteen books each supplied by Pan Macmillan valued at $206.86 each. The theme for this year is ‘living in a treehouse’ and the deadline is 1 October. For full entry

details go to dymocks.com.au/andygriffiths-kids-writing-competition

NOOSA ARTS THEATRE PLAYWRITING COMPETITION The Noosa Arts Theatre Playwriting Competition aims to foster and encourage playwrights, both amateur and professional. A prize money pool of $8,000 is divided between the writers of the best three scripts, with $5,000 awarded to Best Play. Entries close on 1 October, while there is the stage presentation in 2019. A number of terms and conditions should be consulted, see noosaartstheatre.org. au/pages/playwriting-competition/ entry-form.html

THUNDERBOLT PRIZE The New England Thunderbolt Prize for Crime Writing is a national award for unpublished short-form crime writing.

Categories include fiction, non-fiction and poetry and offers prize money of $500 for the winner in each. Entries close on 30 September, while there is an entry fee of $10 per submission ($5 for those under eighteen). For full entry details log on to newc.org.au/ thunderbolt-prize.html

MARGARET RIVER SHORT STORY COMPETITION Open to authors living anywhere of any age, the Margaret River Short Story Competition welcomes short story submissions of a maximum of 3,000 words to an open theme. The first entry is $15 and $10 thereafter, with the winner taking $500 and a trip to the Margaret River Readers and Writers Festival. Deadline is 28 September, for full details go to margaretriverpress. com/submissions/margaret-rivershort-story-competition

THE 2018 SOMERSET NATIONAL NOVELLA WRITING COMPETITION The Somerset National Novella Writing Competition is open to all Australian high school students or home-schooled students aged under nineteen, and is an opportunity for literary growth as well as a number of prizes. The competition is for novellas of between 8,000 and 20,000 words. An entry fee of $20 is payable, with the national winner awarded $2,500 and a full editorial report from Penguin Random House.

Entries close on 7 December. For full details go to somerset.qld.edu.au/ workspace//uploads/pages/files/ storyfest-novella_conditions-o5b7a4afd6ed6c.pdf

THE 2018 SOMERSET NATIONAL POETRY COMPETITION The Somerset National Poetry Prize is designed to encourage a love of poetry among secondary school students and enrich youth literature. Entrants must be under nineteen years of age and be at high school or home-schooled.

There is fee of $15 for each entry, while there are two categories: years seven to nine and years ten to twelve. Poems should be no more than fifty lines. The winner of each category wins $300 and flights to attend the Somerset Celebration of Literature. Deadline for entries is 7 December, with more information available at somerset. qld.edu.au/celebration-of-literature/ competitions/poetry-prize

FIELD OF WORDS MEMOIR COMPETITION Opening on 1 September, this competition is seeking entries that are based on real life and experiences.

Pieces should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length. The winner will receive $400, with the runner-up taking $100. There is an entry fee of $15 and a

deadline for entries of 31 October. For further information visit fieldofwords. com.au/memoir-submissions

THE HORNE PRIZE Aesop and The Saturday Paper are the organisers of The Horne Prize, an essay competition that is seeking entries of up to 3,000 words on the theme ‘Australian life’. Entries close on 17 September. The shortlist will be announced in early December with the winner published in The Saturday Paper on 22 December. For full details on this competition, named after Australian writer Donald Horne, visit thehorneprize.com.au

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Join today and access: •

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Visit byronwritersfestival. com/members

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Writers Groups Alstonville Plateau Writers Group

Meets second Friday of each month, 10am - 12pm. All genres welcome, contact Kerry on (02) 6628 5662 or email alstonvilleplateauwriters@outlook.com

Ballina/Byron U3A Creative Writing

Meets every second Wednesday at 12pm, Fripp Oval, Ballina. Contact Ann Neal on (02) 6681 6612.

Bangalow Writers Group

Meets Thursdays at 9:15am at Bangalow Scout Hall.

Contact Simone on 0407 749 288

Bellingen Writers Group

Meets at Bellingen Golf Club on the fourth Monday of the month at 2pm. All welcome, contact Joanne on (02) 6655 9246 or email jothirsk@restnet.com.au

Byron Bay Memoir and Fiction Writing Group

Dunoon Writers Group

Writers on the Block. Meets second Tuesday of each month, 6:30pm – 8:30pm at Dunoon Sports Club.Contact Helga on (02) 6620 2994 (W), 0401 405 178 (M) or email heg.j@telstra.com

FAW Port Macquarie-Hastings Regional

Meets 1pm on last Saturday of each month, Maritime Museum, Port Macquarie. Contact Joie on (02) 6584 3520 or email Bessie on befrank@tsn.cc

Gold Coast Writers Association

Meets third Saturday of each month, 1:30pm for 2pm start, at Fradgley Hall, Burleigh Heads Library, Park Avenue, Burleigh Heads. Contact 0431 443 385 or email info@goldcoast-writers.org.au

Kyogle Writers

Meets monthly at Sunrise Beach, Byron Bay. Contact Diana on 0420 282 938 or diana.burstall@gmail.com

Meets first Tuesday of each month, 10:30am at Kyogle Bowling Club. Contact Brian on (02) 6624 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

Byron Writers

Lismore Writers Group

Every Tuesday 10am to 12pm, Byron Bay Library.

Contact the library on (02) 6685 8540.

Casino Writers Group

Meets every third Thursday of the month at 4pm at Casino Library. Contact Brian on (02) 6628 2636 or email briancostin129@hotmail.com

Cloudcatchers

For Haiku enthusiasts. A ginko (haiku walk) is undertaken according to group agreement. Contact Quendryth on (02) 6653 3256 or email quendrythyoung@bigpond.com

Coffs Harbour Writers Group

Meets 1st Wednesday of the month 10.30am to 12.30pm. Contact Lorraine Penn on (02) 6653 3256 or 0404 163 136, email: lmproject@bigpond.com. www.coffsharbourwriters.com

Coffs Harbour Memoir Writers Group

Share your memoir writing for critique. Monthly meetings, contact 0409 824 803 or email costalmermaid@gmail.com

Cru3a River Poets

Meets every Thursday at 10:30am, venue varies, mainly in Yamba. Contact Pauline on (02) 6645 8715 or email kitesway@westnet.com.au

Dorrigo Writers Group

Meets every second Wednesday from 10am-2pm. Contact Iris on (02) 6657 5274 or email an_lomall@bigpond.com or contact Nell on (02) 6657 4089

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Meets second Tuesday of the month from 6pm to 8pm at Communities Hub Art Space on Keen Street. Cost is $5 for Hub members, $7.50 for non-members. For more details phone 0410 832 362.

Middle Grade / Young Adult Fiction Writers’ Group

Meets monthly at 2pm on Sundays in Bangalow.

Contact Carolyn Bishop at carolyncbishop@gmail.com or 0431 161 104

Nambucca Valley Writers Group

Meets fourth Saturday of each month, 1:30pm, Nambucca.

Contact (02) 6568 9648 or nambuccawriters@gmail.com

Taree-Manning River Scribblers

Meets second Wednesday of the month, 9am-11:30am, Taree. Call first to check venue. Contact Bob Winston on (02) 6553 2829 or email rrw1939@hotmail.com

Tweed Poets and Writers

Meets weekly at the Coolangatta Senior Citizens Centre on Tuesdays from 1:30 to 3:30pm, NSW time. Poets, novelists, playwrights, short story writers are all welcome. Phone Lorraine (07) 5524 8035 or Pauline (07) 5524 5062.

WordsFlow Writing Group meets Fridays during school term, 12:30pm-3pm, Pottsville Beach Neighbourhood Centre, 12a Elizabeth St, Pottsville Beach. Contact Cheryl on 0412 455 707 or visit www.wordsflowwriters.blogspot.com

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BYRON WRITERS FESTIVAL PRESENTS

BEST OF INSIDERS with Barrie Cassidy ABC TV’s Sunday morning discussion program, Insiders, returns to Byron Bay. Host Barrie Cassidy will guide the panel through all the big 2018 political developments, and screen the most entertaining videos of the political year.

TUESDAY 27 NOV, BYRON THEATRE TICKETS $30 / $35 byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on